


Gävle Snowman

by bookwyrmling



Series: Check Please! 12 Days of Christmas 2016 [3]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Check Please 12 Days of Christmas, Day 3: Building a Snowman, Gen, blame the lax bros, violent death of a snowman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-08 16:15:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8851606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookwyrmling/pseuds/bookwyrmling
Summary: Bylaw 17: Protect Gävle at all costs.Alternatively: The SMH has the back of all its teammates—even the inanimate, frozen ones—especially from the Lax bros.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The title and story is based on the Gävle Goat. If you haven't seen the post going around Tumblr every year this time of year about it, you can look up the story on Wikipedia. It's pretty entertaining and definitely seemed like something the SMH would get into.

Bitty would not be able to tell you when it started. Like most of Samwell Men’s Hockey’s traditions, there is a questionable history passed on by questionable sources. It is, however, noted in the bylaws so is at least as old as the writing on the basement wall behind the water heater.

It did not mean much to Bitty his freshman year. Samwell Men’s Hockey Bylaw 17: Protect Gävle at all costs. Bitty would not be able to tell you who Gävle was or whom you were supposed to protect him from, but it was there. He figured if it was something he needed to know, he’d find out eventually.

Bitty did learn the meaning of the bylaw his second winter at Samwell. He lived in the Haus then and when the first heavy snow dumped overnight, he was torn out of bed by Holster and Ransom and dragged out to the yard in his pajamas. To build a snowman.

While the two jumped out into the fresh, powdery white drifts to join Shitty, Bitty turned right back around and opened the door only to walk right into Jack Zimmermann, dressed from his morning run and, likely, the reason the walk had already been shoveled.

“You don’t really think you’re getting out of this one, do you, Bittle?” Jack asked with a smirk and Bitty could hear the chirps already as he shivered in flannel pants, an oversized sweatshirt and his snowboots.

“No getting out of this one,” Jack added as he took off his cap and pulled it down over Bitty’s head and ears, “It’s in the bylaws.”

“I don’t remember the bylaws saying anything about freezing to death before the sun is even up in the tundra,” Bitty argued as Jack passed over his gloves, as well.

“Nah, but we gotta make sure Gävle’s up before classes start,” Jack explained, shouldering past Bitty before grabbing his sweatshirt by the hoodie and pulling him along with.

“Gävle?”

“Yeah, Bittle. Gävle. From bylaw 14 or whatever.”

“Blaspheme!” Shitty cried as he jumped into the conversation, “14 is Fuck the Lax Team!”

“That’s 13, Shits,” Ransom called over from where he and Holster where building up a Bitty-sized mound, “Gävle’s 17. 14 requires team members to open their door to other sexiled team members for the night upon first request. 14a amends that in the case of severe course duress, said original team member may deny the request if no less than five other teammates have been asked so far.”

“Rans, you sure you don’t wanna do law school?” Holster asked with a snicker, but Bitty blocked them out quickly as he tried to run the bylaws through his head until the light bulb suddenly turned on.

“Okay, so who or what is Gävle, then? The bylaw only says to protect it.”

“We must first build that which we must protect, Bits,” Shitty said sagely as he led Bitty into the snow. He sank to his knees and whined as the cold soaked through his pants and into his legs.

“If we put Bitty on Ransom’s shoulders and Ransom on my shoulders—” Holster began to mutter to himself as he stood back to look at the huge snow mound and then up into the sky.

“No triple deckers,” Jack was quick to warn, “We learned that lesson last year.”

It was a snowman.

Gävle was a snowman.

Admittedly, Gävle was a very large snowman and it took Ransom sitting on Holster’s shoulders to fit the lumpy head on top. The old hockey stick they stuck out of its base — Gävle’s hockey stick, Bitty was informed — looked like a toddler’s toy in comparison and, all told, the thing was about an entire story tall. It had pucks for eyes. It was definitely impressive and Bitty might have expressed as much if he hadn’t been so cold by the end of the process. He was very happy to retreat into the Haus and change out of his now soaked clothes, take a hot shower and return to the kitchen and a freshly brewed pot of coffee.

Blessed heat. He was human again.

It was only half-way through his coffee that Bitty took an active interest in whatever spreadsheet Ransom was working on that had managed to catch the attention of every other Haus member—Jack included.

“No, I had Lardo double-check while scheduling spring semester with the weight-room,” he explained, “Lax uses it…” his voice dropped as he pointed around on Ransom’s laptop screen and Ransom’s hands were quick to begin typing as his eyes and ears followed Jack’s directions.

“We’re gonna have to chat with some of the other teams around here again, this year,” Ransom added, “girl’s cheerleading and cross country seemed pretty amenable last year once we threw in a few of Bitty’s pies-”

“Wait,” Bitty cut-in, “What’re you talking about with my pies?”

“Dude, Gävle lasted through January last year thanks to your pies, man. Why else do you think you didn’t have to pull any nightwatches?” Holster replied and Bitty huffed in annoyance.

“What do my pies have to do with how long a snowman lasts? Why does the bylaw even say we have to protect it, anyway? And why would I have had to pull a nightwatch?”

Everyone blinked at him, staring in silence until Shitty smacked his hand against the tabletop.

“Oh, shit! Bitty made pie!”

“Yeah,” Bitty admitted, “Just yesterday. Leftovers are still in the fridge.”

“No, on the tour! Your tour. You didn’t get all the history man!”

“Shit, Bitty,” Ransom said, “You don’t know about Gävle?”

Bitty huffed at that and crossed his arms over his chest. “Haven’t I been saying as much since you dragged me out of bed and threw me into that frigid hellscape?”

“...it’s not even that—”

“—NONE of that from you, Jack Zimmermann. You are an outlier and should not be counted. Now who here is going to get me up to speed?”

Jack’s jaw dropped as the others laughed, but it was—surprisingly—Shitty who reigned himself in enough to speak first.

“You heard of the goat, bro?”

“The Christmas goat in Sweden?” he specified when Bitty raised an eyebrow, but that seemed to get them no further, so Shitty sighed, grabbed Ransom’s laptop— eliciting a shout from Ransom, himself, that went unheeded save for a staredown before Ransom nodded and Shitty pulled up a Wikipedia article.

“The Gävle Goat is from Gävle Sweden and it’s made every year, but is almost always burned down despite security and a nearby firestation.”

“If you’re worried about the snowman melting, I don’t think you understand how seasons work…” Bitty chirped, but Shitty instantly shook his head.

“The Lax bros, brah,” he corrected, “They try to mess it up every year. They always succeed eventually, but we get better at it every year. Last year we used some of your pies to pay the Cross Country and Cheer teams who have houses near us to watch it for us during practices and games that didn’t conflict, but they eventually got him.”

“I mean, if it wasn’t the Lax team, I’d honestly be impressed with the use of firecrackers, but…” Holster admitted and almost everyone nodded.

“They blew it up?” Bitty asked in disbelief.

“At 3 in the morning,” Ransom added with a slow nod.

“You should have seen how fast Jack was after them, bro, it brought tears to my eyes,” Shitty sniffled.

“It was like that year’s Epikegster all over again,” Holster said and nodded sagely.

“I don’t think they’ll be using explosives again so soon after that,” Ransom admitted as he took his laptop back, “but there are still plenty of other ways to sabotage. So we’re setting up a watch. You live in the house now, Bitty, so you’ll have to help, but we’ll keep the official schedule to your free days if you bake us pies to bribe the other teams on the block.”

Bitty looked at the expectant faces one by one before sighing and rolling up his sleeves, “If Jack gives me a hand, you’ll have two for every house around us by the end of tomorrow.”

By hook or by crook, Gävle was making it to spring this year.


End file.
